


The Lines Open to Ourselves

by spinsterclaire



Series: For Imagine Claire and Jamie [11]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Book 2: Dragonfly in Amber, Book 3: Voyager, Diana Gabaldon, Diary/Journal, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-28 10:16:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6325081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinsterclaire/pseuds/spinsterclaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Bree and Claire's journal entries from 1948 to 1968.</p><p>Chapter 1: Bree journals the day after the anniversary of Culloden.<br/>Chapter 2: Claire writes a letter to Faith on her would-be eighteenth birthday.<br/>Chapter 3: Curious about Claire's thistle ring, Bree visits a medium for answers.<br/>Chapter 4: Bree writes about meeting Jamie for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Remember what it is to be me: that is always the point." —Joan Didion, "On Keeping a Notebook"

**THIS NOTEBOOK IS THE PROPERTY OF** : _Brianna Ellen Randall_

 **AGE:** _~~13~~ 13.5_

_**April 17, 1962** _

Dear Diary,      

Mama thinks I do not hear her. But I do.

You can hear just about anything if you listen.

The Cold War may be quiet, but the nukes are ticking beneath our feet. There’s a wall in Berlin now, and it shouts louder than the protests, than the refugee fists pounding against the concrete. It speaks over President Kennedy, his smiles, his promise for a “New Frontier”.  _This_ is the sound that rings in my ears: the quiet war of fear and distrust. It’s a lonely world where everyone must watch their back.

I hear the loneliness in Mama, too, built around her like a wall. I am the only one who watches her back.

It’s funny, really—I learned this all from her. “Intelligence belongs to those who listen,” she told me once. Her Uncle Lamb had wax moth ears and was the smartest person she’s ever known. She claims he always found the bones of kings, buried in the most unusual places.

“How do you know where they are?” Mama asked him one day. He put his ear to the ground and laughed: “I can hear their hearts beating.”

Well, I can hear Mama’s heartsong too. It sounds different from Daddy’s, skips like a scratched record. I think it’s tired—but then Mama is always a little tired. Her eyes are purple, and she’s yawning before noon. There is never enough coffee or hours in the night. I get mad when she forgets to pack my lunch, when she dozes through opening credits.

“How can you _fall asleep_ during Hitchcock, Mama?”

“Not asleep, darling, just resting,” but her chest falls heavy and her cheekbones soften.

Mama denies it—she always does. So I test her just to make sure.

_Does Mr. Hitchcock make a cameo in Psycho?_

_Was Gregory Peck found guilty in Spellbound?_

_What is the serial killer’s nickname in Shadow of a Doubt?_

Somehow, she knows the answers. Maybe she’s seen the movies already, or maybe she listens as she sleeps. Perhaps Mama is _always_ listening—like me.

I found her snoring in the kitchen last month. Her face was against the table, her scrubs still speckled in strangers’ blood. There was an uneaten bowl of Cheerios—all cereal, no milk—and a spoon in the thistle-ringed hand. She had just gotten home from work, and it was 3AM. (There was something sad about the whole thing, but I’m not sure what.)

“You should go to bed, Mama."

“Hm?” she said. “Oh hi, smudge.”

(She hasn’t called me “smudge” since I was five.)

Mama didn’t ask me why I was up, and she didn’t go to sleep, either. I know because I heard her at 5 AM, soft tip-toes on the hallway carpet. She knelt beside my bed, floated like a ghost. Her face was wet when she kissed me. Her voice shook.

“G’night, s-smudge.”

(That was sad too, but I know why. Daughters aren’t supposed to hear their mothers cry.)

Sometimes I wish I didn’t hear the things I do. Like the arguments. Even when I close my doors, the anger seeps through the walls. They try to be quiet, but Mama is fierce and Daddy _shushes_ like a headmaster. Their room is the city that never sleeps. It always yells, even when they don’t.

Sometimes there is a slamming door, or the sofa’s groan when Daddy sleeps downstairs. Sometimes Mama leaves, and the Volkswagen’s tires crunch the gravel. (I don’t know where she goes, but she eats her toast with centuries in her eyes.) I almost prefer the yelling on those nights.

Don’t get me wrong, diary—Mama and Daddy aren’t bad parents. Just the opposite!

On my days off, Daddy takes me bike riding and lets me join his lectures. I like watching him when he teaches, confident in his tweed and his scuffed leather brogues. He is a different man then. He walks without a shadow, stands up a little straighter. I think he loves me and his students and his ancient history more than he loves Mama.

Even if she has the late shift, Mama rubs my back each night. We watch the moonrise from the window as her fingers sculpt my spine. 

“Your hands work miracles”, I tell her, “and rewrite fates; they could kill if they wanted to.” She never says they couldn’t. She never says they haven’t.

(I know those hands, though. It’s Mama who plucks the insects from our carpet, who puts them in her garden. The Queen of Sheba with her ladybugs-in-waiting.)

Uncle Lamb would not have to dig for her bones—they’d crawl to the surface, reveal themselves, and refuse to be dead. They’d raise an entire graveyard too, and scream if you buried them again. But then that’s just Mama for you: a peace warrior. She’ll fight to the death for your life.

I listen to Mama when she thinks no one is watching. She talks to herself, mostly in English, but sometimes she speaks a language of mud and wind and rain. Just a few words, all spoken to the moon. It is a strange language, little romance and not at all like the French we sing together. _Il me parle tout bas/Je vois la vie en rose._

I should feel guilty for spying, but it’s hard not to listen when I see her standing there, mouth making such foreign, plaintive sounds. It’s when I hear her most. And I mean _really_ hear her—the way I hear the war in the Wall and the bombs’ crackling fuse.

Like last night, for instance. I heard a lot of things last night.

ONE: Mama’s footsteps on the stairwell. I thought she might be sleepwalking. She does that sometimes. Just walks and walks as if she’s got someplace else to be.

TWO: Mama’s hands turning the knob. It sticks for me, but it never troubles Mama. She can walk through doors like air.

THREE: The creak of the porch swing when she sat down. I was just behind her, in the doorway, but Mama’s mind was on the stars.

FOUR: Mama’s first breath. She cannot breathe in our house. I think she prefers the open sky.

FIVE: The cry of the wind. It blew the curls around Mama’s face. It made her younger.

SIX: The strike of a match and the burst of a flame. I saw the silver ring on her finger. Its thistles bloomed in the night, larger than day and war and life.

SEVEN: Mama’s second breath. This time, she trembled, and the cigarette shook in her hand.

EIGHT: _Is tu fuil ‘o mo chuislean, is tu cnaimh de mo chnaimh—_ the language of the mud and wind and rain. Beneath her toes, in her hair, and on her cheeks. I am not sure Mama belongs in Boston.

NINE: The _sssssst_ of the Rothman on the patio. The embers died, but Mama’s ring still shined.

TEN: “Bree, sweetheart, come out here with me.”

_How did you know I was here?_

_I always know when you’re nearby._

_How, though?_

But of course I already knew. Mama is the one who listens in her sleep, whose bones will never be buried. It is Mama who rules the garden, who rules the world. She writes miracles. (She says I’m one of them.)

_What were you saying before, Mama?_

_Nothing, baby. Come sit with me._

_It didn’t sound like nothing._

_You’re right. It was something._

I’m too old to sit in her lap, but she needed me to be a child. She kissed my ear, then the beauty mark on my chin. Her breath smelled of tobacco and Crest.

_You’re getting so big, dinky. Stop getting so big._

_I’ll try my best, but I’m not making any promises._

ELEVEN: Mama’s laughter. It sounded like Disney World and trips to the zoo and dress shopping in a New York summer. I will always remember that city day in June when she called me beautiful and I called her blind. ( _Maybe, chick. But you’re still beautiful._ ) Mama bought me two dresses, one blue and one white. ( _I never wore things like this when I was little._ ) 

_Mama, are you sad?_

But of course I knew that answer too.

_Sometimes._

_But not…all the time?_

_How could I be? I’ve got you._

_I don’t know._

_You know I love you, right?_

_Yes._

_More than anything?_

_Hmm…more than…Hershey’s chocolate bars?_

_Maybe not the almond ones._

_Mama!_

_You’re silly._ Of course _I love you more than chocolate! You’re much more delicious._

_Well, you might be, too, if you didn’t smoke!_

_Right. Smoking is a horrible habit. Never start._

_I won’t._

_Don’t tell your father, either._

_I won’t._

My teachers smoke like chimneys, and they stain the filters red and plum. Mama’s lipstick is just for holidays, and she only smokes at dark. If Daddy had seen the Rothman, he might have thought it was a fluke. (I threw it over the fence anyways, just to be safe. I didn’t want another argument.)

 _Aren’t you going to ask me how much I love_ you _?_

_How much do you love me, Bree?_

_More than…guess!_

_More than…Who was your date to the Spring Fling?_

_Charlie Jenkins? Mama, I could never love Charlie Jenkins!_

_Good. I don’t like him anyways. You’re too smart for him._

_Keep guessing…_

_Hmm, let me see here. Ice cream?_

_Nope!_

_Coca-Cola?_

_Bingo!_

TWELVE: Mama’s laugh again. Only this time it was hot dogs in Boston Commons, too much ketchup and not enough napkins. It was M&M pancakes to old Billie Holiday, and Mama’s freckles when she’s had too much sun. (I just burn.)

_You’re too good at guessing games, Mama._

_That’s just because I know you well. But Coca-Cola? That’s quite a lot._

_It’s true, though._

There was no more need for words then, and so I let Mama shape my back. Did you know mothers and daughters can say a million things without saying anything at all? Mama may love me more than chocolate, and I may love Mama more than Coca-Cola, but we both knew that a long time ago. It has always been that way, and it will always be that way. Anyone with ears would know this.

But then there are certain things daughters can never understand. Like why Mama wears a thistle ring or why she sits on the patio at night. There are words she can’t say, and she trips over our neighbor’s name (her name is Jenny). All drawers and locks with no keys. Mothers are mysteries—mine, especially.

THIRTEEN: “Sweetheart? Are you still awake?”

I didn’t say anything. I liked the silence. And I liked listening to the hushed world from Mama’s lap, her “chick”, her “smudge”.

FOURTEEN: “I see him in you, Bree. I always have.”

Mama thinks I do not hear her.

But I do. 

You can hear just about anything if you listen.

FIFTEEN: Mama’s heart broke after that. I think she gave half to the moon.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claire writes to Faith on her would-be eighteenth birthday.

**JOURNAL: _CBRF_**

**May 12, 1964**

_How many?_

_How many years is enough?_

One? Five? A decade – and then some?

A grieving mother asked me this once – as if, because I wore a crisp, white coat and entered her son’s T.O.D, I somehow knew the answer. I suppose she assumed I had solved the equation, had calculated the ideal span of time and discovered the shift. That, at some point, I had endured “enough” and could wear the coat, write the T.O.D., and no longer ask, “Why? Why _my_ child?”

But what exactly did the woman mean by “enough”? Did she think that “enough” meant forgetting, the final disappearance of grief?

I have my doubts about forgetting.

The human body may forgive, but it does not forget. Our skin heals, our bones mend, but the story does not end there. We have scars, arthritic aches in thunderstorms. Our phantom limbs itch in the night, a breath beyond the grave. They say our bodies are in the soil, that the trees are everyone that has come before us. We are human; we never forget. What once was – love, heartbreak, joy, grief – remains in some way, however small.

And Faith, baby – I cannot forget. There is no such thing as forgetting you.

I remember the first moment I saw your face, thinking _How?_

“How could something be so beautiful?”

I remember the first time I held you, the way your head fit the shape of my palm – just so, like you were meant to be there, had, in fact, been there all along. (Was there ever a time I did not carry you with me?) But I remember the other moments too, the deep-seated grief: when my arms were empty, how I read your name on a headstone before I ever wrote it myself. _Faith Fraser._ That didn’t seem right. It still doesn’t.

And so I told the woman: “Enough? I’m not sure there is such a thing.”

She didn’t speak to me after that (Dr. Evans nearly fired me, but then Dr. Evans is what you might call “a bit of a cad”), but I kept asking myself that question long afterwards: _How long is enough?_ And _Is there such a thing?_

It has been 6,570 days. Not enough, never enough.

You would be eighteen today.

When I woke up this morning, I watched the sunrise, and I thought of you. When I woke up yesterday, I saw a little girl wearing a little blue dress, and I thought of you. When I woke up on the 6,568 days before that, when I washed the dishes, drove to work, listened to the radio, I thought of you. My beautiful girl, my small heart – I always think of you.

So I know there is not “enough” to _forget_ – but what about acceptance? That’s a favorite term of the so-called “grief counselors” But I’m not sure “acceptance” is the right word. Too consensual, too approving.

I can’t accept that you’ll never be the little girl wearing the little blue dress, skipping along the sidewalk to school. How could I? There is no accepting that you aren’t here, blowing out eighteen candles and rolling your eyes when I cry, just a little, because I’m your mother and that’s what mothers do. (Your sister has mastered the eye roll, by the way. I can only assume you taught her this, that when those pretty blue eyes roll skywards, you’re sharing some sort of inside joke.)

“Peace”, in my opinion, seems more appropriate. Is there ever “enough” for “peace”? I think so. I do not hate God as I used to. I know that your father is at your side. I see Bree, and I think that a part of you is in her, somewhere deep in her bones and running in her blood. _That_ is my peace, I suppose. But still, not a day passes where I do not wish you were here. I cannot see the sun without seeing your face.

And that’s the thing, really – I do not know what “enough” is, but that is something I know so well: your face.

And your tiny hands.

And your ten fingers and ten toes.

And your wisps of hair.

And your eyes.

Those eyes. Your father’s, entirely, as I’m sure you know. (Ask him if you have my hair. If you do…word of the wise: avoid humidity at all costs.)

I have you memorized, Faith. I haven’t forgotten.

 

For a time, I always reserved the window seats. On planes, on trains, in cars and restaurants. I’d even drag a chair to our big bay window, position it so that I could see straight to the Boston skyline. I couldn’t stand to be shut within walls, tucked away in some dark corner – what might I miss? What signs might pass me by? Windows gave me an open view of the sky, and I needed that to watch the birds dip and soar into the clouds. I was obsessed with birds, really – I read books on ornithology, could recognize calls, flight patterns, painted the bathroom “Robin’s Egg Blue”. A friend of mine, Joe Abernathy, asked me about it one day: “LJ,” he said, “why the birds?”

I passed it off as a renewed interest, a product of my childhood with Lamb (I had to come up with _something_ – didn’t want to be known as the bloody pigeon lady from _Mary Poppins_ ).

The truth of it, though? I watched the birds for signs of you. I followed them, searching for Heaven somewhere up in that great blue sky. Heaven as I saw it. Heaven as I still see it:

You.

You and those eyes. Those hands, those fingers and toes, that hair. Flying with the birds, making friends with the moon. 

Heaven, the place you were allowed to live. 

I thought if I found it, I could tell you all the things I should have said a million times - and a million more - when I had the chance. Things like:

I love you.

I miss you.

I’m sorry.

Over and over again.

I’ve since realized that I don’t need to follow the birds to find you. That if I close my eyes, I can feel the small weight of your head in my palm, that missing, most perfect piece of myself restored. You’re still here, baby. You always have been. I know that now.

Perhaps _this_ is what “enough” is. Perhaps this is the solution to the equation, and I’ve finally surpassed that ideal span of time and found the shift. Now, there is “peace”, though grief still exists and I sometimes wonder, “Could I have saved you?” in those moments of guilt. After all, there is no forgetting; what once has been will always _be_ in some way. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that sort of “enough” truly is _enough_.

“Enough”: an acute sorrow that comes in waves. A dark room in your heart. Livable grief tempered by an unwavering love.

Faith, baby, I may not have all the answers, but I do know this: I am so lucky to have had _you_. You, my Heaven, my angel…You alone were so much more than _enough_.

You are my greatest blessing, my greatest victory. My first, my daughter, the best and most precious part of me.  

Eighteen years ago, you made me something better than I ever was.

You made me who I am.

You made me a mother.

 

I am so grateful, so proud to call you mine. Happy eighteenth birthday, my beautiful girl.

Keep an eye on your father for me.    

Love,

Mama

 

P.S. You are allowed one celebratory glass of whisky up there. _One_. (Maybe two. But your father has to pour the second.)


	3. Chapter 3

**THIS NOTEBOOK IS THE PROPERTY OF:** _Brianna Ellen Randall_

 **AGE:** _~~13~~ ~~13.5~~ 14_

 

**November 27, 1962 – 9:30PM**

Dear Diary,

I lied to Mama again today. 

I’ve been lying to Mama a lot lately. 

And they aren’t silly fibs about unfinished homework. They aren’t false promises about eating my vegetables or reading by flashlight (Daddy says that’ll ruin my eyesight). Those lies are never for Mama, anyways. She isn’t home after school to check my algebra. She isn’t home to tuck me into bed, to slide out _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ from beneath my pillow and say, “Medically speaking, your father is wrong.” She isn’t there to hear those lies.

But I never thought I _could_ lie to Mama. She always tells the truth – it’s in her blood – and I think the truth finds her too. She can see through the skin and bone to find the break.

 _How can you be such an awful liar, Mama?_ I asked her one day.

 _You say it like it’s a_ bad _thing, dinky._ But then she paused and looked out the window. _I suppose I’ve a glass face. Your father used to tell me that._

I remember thinking Daddy was confused, that Mama was anything but glass. More like iron or steel. More like the schoolyard’s Virgin Mary, centuries-old marble standing high above the ground. You can’t shatter Mama. She’ll only stand as tall as that statue, forcing the world to move and wrap itself around her.

_What’s ‘a glass face’?_

_It means my face betrays me._

Do you think it’s strange that she said “betrays”? As though she wants to lie but can’t? _Betrays?_ I wanted to ask, _What are you hiding, Mama?_ But I didn’t. I couldn’t. (I was ten and scared.) 

I have so many questions, Diary. So many questions I’m afraid to ask. Like,

When I see her on the phone, agreeing to overtime, I want to ask, _Why are you running from us, Mama?_

And when I see her washing up, rubbing her left hand raw, I want to ask, _Why do you take off Daddy’s ring but not the silver one?_

When I see her in front of me and across from me and beside me, whenever I see her: _Where are you, Mama? Where have you been?_

Mama’s face might have a mind of its own, but I doubt it’s much farther than what’s inside her head (you can’t get much farther than that). She doesn’t lie, but she doesn’t talk, either. I’ve never known what Mama is thinking – I can see the skin, but I can never find the break. Sometimes it’s like I’ve never known her at all.

(Daddy seems to know how to reach her, though Mama doesn’t want him to, and I’m not sure he wants to either. Maybe that’s the marble part of Mama – the piece of her that keeps Daddy out.)

And that’s why I’ve been lying, Diary. To reach her. She’s been strange ever since Halloween. Sad again.

But _my_ face isn’t like Mama’s (it isn’t like Daddy’s, either), and it hasn’t betrayed me yet. For instance, we were in the kitchen this afternoon when I said,

_I’m going to the park!_

_For what?_

_To play basketball with Maggie. Back by 9._

(I wasn’t wearing sports clothes, and it’s almost December. Mama didn’t notice; her head is always in her textbooks on Saturdays.)

 _Oh? Well, have fun, love_. And she went right back to her notes and to her practice tests, the timer still ticking beside her. She was agitated, twisting the thistle ring around her finger. Twist, twist, twist. And then – _ding_ (the timer) and _clang_ (the thistle ring against the linoleum), both at the same time.

She didn’t look at me when I walked out the door. Didn’t even look at my face to see if it was glass (it wasn’t). She only looked at her then-empty finger, the ring on the floor. The loudest silence. I’ve never seen Mama without that ring, and so I waited until she’d picked it up. Just to make sure she was okay. Just to make sure she was breathing again.

Just to make sure.

I walked all the way down the street, past the next one, and the next one too. Past the park and the schoolyard and the Virgin Mary (part of her shoulder was missing; I hadn’t noticed that before). But I couldn’t stop hearing that sound, _Ding-clang!_ and I couldn’t stop seeing Mama’s face. Like nothing existed when that ring hit the floor, no oxygen without it. Like maybe, just maybe, she is glass after all, and if I’d stayed a second longer, I’d finally see past the skin and bone. 

I’ve been thinking about this a lot – and about that ring too. That’s what’s been leading to Ingrid’s house these past four weeks, searching for Mama’s truth. I was sure (I’m _still_ sure) that the answer to that ring is worth every lie I’ve saved for her. Ingrid will help me understand.

Nobody goes to Ingrid’s house. Nobody talks to her, either, though her name is whispered at school lunches, during parties. It’s only Mrs. Bath who goes to have her palms read. Everyone else claims she’s the devil. Maggie disagrees, says she’s witch. A good one, though – the kind that floats in bubbles and wears pink dresses. 

Mostly, I think Ingrid is just lonely. Like Mama, like Daddy. Like me. She helps me so long as I water her plants and feed the cat. She forgets that kind of stuff. Her mind is never in that house.

She’s more like Mama than anyone I’ve ever met.

But Ingrid _does_ know things, Diary. Sometimes she talks to empty rooms. Sometimes she sees things and she hears things, though she read my palm and saw nothing. She read my tarot, too, but the cards were too sticky and stubborn. (“Your fate is trapped behind two hundred years.” Whatever that means.) 

But something happened yesterday. Finally.

We were sitting at the table, Fluffy full and the plants dripping. Ingrid’s arachnid fingers twitching, her eyes of tangled webs. I was thinking about Mama’s thistle ring, about _Ding-clang!_ , when she grabbed my hand and said:

 _He misses you._  

I looked up.

_He?_

_The Red Man._

_The Red Man? Who’s that?_

Ingrid shook her head, already so far away (further than the schoolyard’s Virgin Mary, past the park, and down the two streets to our red front door; further than Mama).

 _Mo nighean…_ , she said. 

You know when you can feel a ghost? That tickle down your neck or that crawl up your spine? This wasn’t like that. It was living flesh and blood in Ingrid’s body, clawing its way out of her throat and into the room, to me. She sounded like a man.

_I am here._

_I love you._

_Tell your mother that –_

_Tell your mother that –_

_Tell your mother that  –_

And that was it, Diary. Only _I am here_ and _I love you_ and _Tell your mother that –_ So out of reach, just like Mama. But still, there was Ingrid: weeping and speaking in the dead-but-not-dead’s voice, spiders running through my hair, never telling me what it is that I should tell Mama.

I don’t remember what happened next. I didn’t know what I would say when I walked through our door, into our house and saw that face that could be stone or could be glass ( _Who are you, Mama?_ ). And I didn’t know what I would do when I saw my face, so not like Mama’s and so not like not Daddy’s, in the mirror above my desk ( _Who am I, Mama?_ ). But eventually I left. There wasn’t enough air in the room.

It was dark when I finally got home; Daddy’s car still gone, the kitchen light off. Mama was sleeping on the sofa, her curls tangled and her glasses crooked. When I saw her there, I wanted to ask,

_Who is the Red Man, Mama?_

_Why does he miss me? And how does he love me?_  

But I didn’t. I couldn’t. (I am fourteen and still scared.) 

Instead, I took her glasses off, knowing she’d crush them in her sleep (always tossing and turning, Mama). Her right hand was on her chest, the thistle ring where it always is. Keeping her here, if only a little. I reached down and traced the blooms on the band, trying to find the answers I don’t have to the questions I’m always too afraid to ask.

And then Mama woke up.

 _How was the park, sweetheart?_ she asked me. She tried to hide it, but I saw her smudged mascara. Ink smearing the page; unreadable. _Did you have fun?_

_It was good. I won all_ _three games of one-on-one._

_That’s hardly fair. Maggie barely comes up to your waist! You’re ruthless._

_Ha! Well, Daddy says loss builds character._  

I regretted that immediately, because then Mama’s eyes fell to her fingers. I’d forgotten mine were there, pads still on the thistle ring. Mama smiled a not-quite smile, and I smiled a not-quite smile back. ( _I am here. I love you._ )

_Brianna…_

Mama pulled my hand towards her, and she took off the ring, slid it onto my finger without another word _._ It was one size too big, so I had to hold it there, crushing the blooms against my palm. “Two hundred years” smearing the page; unreadable.

(I wonder if Mama knows I didn’t go to the park, or see Maggie, or do anything of the things I said I did. Maybe she’s been letting it go. Maybe she wants me to understand.) 

(I’m afraid of questions, but maybe Mama is afraid of answers.) 

I looked at the ring and then I looked at Mama, not sure what to do. But she was already fast asleep, the not-quite smile still on her face of glass, her face of stone. 

_What could I possibly tell you, Mama?_

 

**November 27, 1962 – 12:30AM**

Dear Diary,

I crept downstairs and put the ring back on her finger. Just to make sure she was still okay. Just to make sure she was still breathing.

Just to make sure.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bree writes about meeting Jamie for the first time.

**THIS NOTEBOOK IS THE PROPERTY OF: _Brianna Ellen Randall_**

**September 14, 1769**

It has been two days since I met my father.

I have spent two days with my father.

I have known my father for two days.

However I say it, the phrase “two days” seems grossly insufficient. “Two days”—a lazy weekend? a fevered sleep?—does not reflect the enormity of what has happened: A sudden completion, a settling of pieces I had not known were there, so dislodged.

It began the minute I saw him. Fifty feet away, and he was unmistakable, even half-hidden in a maple’s shadow. There was the massive height I’d been promised, and then the sharp, straight nose between the eyes. Those eyes. Immediately, I had recognized them, so blue and so uniquely slanted, as the originals of my own. Jamie Fraser was exactly as Mama had described him: impressive but approachable—and indisputably mine.

You should know that, despite this, I was terrified. That I almost ran away, a coward, and said none of the lines I’d practiced. But then one step in his direction became two, and then four, and then it was as if my whole life had been leading to this moment, to these rushed, sprawling steps towards the man, _my father_ , under the maple tree.

I had imagined our meeting so many times that I was not prepared for the immediate, pressing force of his voice. A bumbling miscommunication at first, and then a question:

_Do you have a message for me, lass?_

Did I have a message? God. So many messages. I wanted to tell him about Mama, about how she bore him every day around her finger, a silver and thistled devotion, as one might bear a cross. I wanted to tell him what I had risked in coming here, that it was all worth it, that I loved him—though I did not know why, or how, or if this was something I could say aloud.

There were memories that came to mind, too: A birthday party, and I was six, looking down at the vulnerable tops of my friends’ heads ( _I have always been tall like you_ ). I remembered the dinners Daddy hosted, how the guests sometimes took an academic interest in the anomaly of my hair ( _I have always wondered where the red came from_ ). And then I thought of the day Mama went back for Jamie but went away from me—my name written in her doctor’s script, as crisp as her abrupt absence.

My name. Mostly I wanted to tell Jamie Fraser my name. And so, of all these things I had wanted to say, that was the message I gave him: Brianna.

Out of his mouth, it was “ _Bree_ anna.” Decades from now, when the details of this moment have been blotted by time, that stressed first syllable will still remain. A new meaning in the new sound—Jamie’s message for me.

I had heard my name said a million ways, but never like this. Daddy had called it loudly, proudly, and announced it whenever he could. He’d lift me onto his lap when I was small, place a fond hand on my back when I was not, and introduce me with such joy and such rapture—“ _Brianna_ ”—as if to remind himself, and everyone else, that I was his.

And Mama. Mama was different too. On her tongue, I was something between a plea and a refrain—almost always  _Bree_. The second syllable wasn’t cut in laziness, I think, but in a grasping intimacy. With her urgent “ _Bree_ ,” my attention was already caught. Already I was closer to her.

But with Jamie,  _Da_ , I am something else. “ _Bree_ anna,” said with a boyish sort of wonder—gratitude and disbelief that I can, and will, respond. He has said it a handful of times over the past two days (two days?), but whenever he does, it is with the greatest care. My presence here is something to be savored, almost too good to be true.

Da uses this same awe-struck tenderness with Mama. Just this morning I saw her hand rise up from their bed, a wink of light in the dark, to find his face and rest there. Da stood above her, unmoving, and I thought how powerful was that silence, that easy but loaded gesture of a stilled hand on a stilled cheek. I think my parents will always be amazed that they have arrived at this place together: A home to call their own, their flesh and blood standing in the doorway.

I feel this way about the three of us too.

I have always sensed a missing link, have spent so much time wondering what it is and who I am. What does it mean when your life is twisted up in a lie? What does it mean when you are part of a painful, unspoken secret? This is what I asked myself, again and again, whenever I heard Mama puttering downstairs in the night—seeking something in the sky or, more recently, in books. It’s what I asked myself when I last visited Daddy’s grave:  _What are we now that I am not the person you said I was?_

Somehow, these past two days have helped me to understand, to find the link: I am not a lie, or a shameful secret, but promises kept and sacrifices made and longings, so many longings. Nothing erased, nothing less. A little more.

I will never stop being the five-year-old who tied her Daddy’s shoes before he went to work. I will always be the evenings we spent together, just he and I, with lobster rolls and goblets of juice passed as wine. I am still me and Mama on one of her rare days off—waltzing across the kitchen floor in our stockinged feet. How we sang, how we twirled. How we offered up our private tragedies to Nat King Cole and a buttery sun.  _You are so like the lady with the mystic smile._

And I am still our family of tiny, invisible wounds—me, Daddy, Mama—in the front seat of a snowed-in car. We are holding hot thermoses and reciting  _A_   _Christmas Carol_ ,our frozen breaths filling the spaces between us.

But I am also these new things: Da taking me to his favorite clearing in the woods. The red deer there, watching. Our quiet conversations about bees and  _Apollo_  and the dead but stubborn light of stars.  _A leannan_ , his darling, his blessing.

I no longer have to fear the question— _Who am I, Mama? Where do I come from?_ —because the answer is so clear. So simple, all along. 

I have come from, and have always come from, the sincerest love. I was begot in it; I was raised in it. I was kept in the dark out of love and brought into the light out of this same feeling. Always, I have been surrounded by love, in one form or another. This is how I will raise my child, and what I will tell them, too, when they ask me of their own history.

 _Look around you_ , I will say. _It’s right here, it’s all around us_. 

Part of my history is in those old memories, which existed then and will continue to exist, even here. And part of my history is in this time, this house, this very room—in Mama’s hand reaching up to cup Da’s cheek; in Da’s cheek, pressing itself into Mama’s hand.


End file.
